I tried everything I could think of to avoid having a tummy tuck. Crunches, the treadmill, diet and none of it would get rid of the extra skin in my mid-section. Surgery was the last thing I wanted to do. You see I have had gastric bypass and have lost a bunch of weight which is very exciting. I know when I had the gastric bypass that there would be a chance that after loosing the weight I would have a lot of excess skin and that is exactly what happened. I decided that after going through so much to loose weight, it seemed like a tummy tuck would be the final piece of the puzzle to get me where I wanted to be. Everyone was always complimenting me on my weight loss and how great I looked, but I knew that that extra flab on my stomach was keeping me from really experiencing the full joy of my drastic weight loss. I would like to share my experience with you in the hopes that it will help you understand what is involved in a tummy tuck. It is my hope that this helps others like me who have lost a lot of weight only to be confronted with having to go through a tummy tuck to get the desired "new body". The tummy tuck procedure removes extra fat and skin and tightens the muscles in your abdomen. It is also called abdominplasty and is considered major surgery. Here is how a tummy tuck is done. The surgeon makes two incisions. One is just above the pubic area and goes from one hip to the other. As you can imagine, this is quite a long scar. The skin is pulled down and my extra skin was removed along with some fat. The fat was removed with liposuction and he also took some fat off my waist and hips. I was happy with this because I have not had a waistline in 20 years! Then the muscles were tightened up and he stretched the skin back up over my abdomen. Here is where is gets a little weird. They had to construct a new belly button because once the skin was stretched up, I lost my belly button. From what I understand, this happens to everyone who has a full tummy tuck. I was able to go home that night, but I do not really remember much because I had a lot of medication in me. I was most comfortable in a reclining chair and I did have quite a bit a pain. This surprised me because I am one of those people that has quite a high pain tolerance. One thing I did have to do was wear a surgical girdle for a couple of weeks. One thing you should be warned about is that you will not wake up from surgery looking great. You have to remember that there will be quite a bit so swelling so you will have to wait until the swelling goes down to be able to see how flat your stomach is. It took a month for the swelling to go down completely and then I was very happy with the results of the surgery. My doctor wanted me to wait at least three weeks before resuming any exercise. This was really hard for me after the pain started to subside because I was used to exercising and I just wanted to start to feel good again. But I waited because after having gone through two surgeries to look good, I did not want to mess it up just by being impatient! It has now been 5 months since I had the tummy tuck and I am thrilled with how I look. Sure I have a scar but it is not like anyone is going to see it because I still dress pretty modestly. One thing that surprises me is that wearing tight clothes is still somewhat uncomfortable, but I am waiting to see what happens with that. All in all I am very happy that I went through with this. I really feel like it is the icing on the cake.
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